Congo riverboat man: You whites are mean - Part 7

Somewhere between Kisangani and Bumba - Maybe we first had to travel together on an overcrowded boat for a week. Then suddenly, my new friends started talking openly about world politics. Within one afternoon I heard it twice: “With all due respect, you white people are mean.”

From the beginning I received a lukewarm welcome as a white person in the Congo, very different from Uganda where I live. Several people have told me they are convinced that all white people are racists. Black-white relationships here have been greatly strained during the harsh colonial regime of Belgium, followed by decades of dictatorship rule under Mobutu Sese Seko, the man who plundered the Congo – and who was openly backed by the USA.

The president the whites want
“Which elections?” Adou wonders when I ask who he is going to vote for in November, when the Congo goes to the polls. “The only president we want is now in jail in your country.” Now he has a point. The popular ex-rebel leader, now a politician, Jean-Pierre Bemba has been in the custody of the International Criminal Courts in The Hague for years now. “Your ICC is interfering in our politics,” Adou knows for sure. “Why else has his trial still not been completed after three years? And if he is guilty of crimes, isn’t the current president as well, and how about the leaders of our neighboring countries?”

With Bemba out, the Congolese feel there is no choice. “The West also continuously keeps stealing our minerals, while the United Nations mission in the Congo (MONUSCO) doesn’t protect us at all,” the fierce Adou claims. Most of the people around us seem to agree. “The good thing is that God will punish the Western countries who steal our riches by sending them a tsunami or a tornado,” Gaston concludes.

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